Joseph C. Wilson IV: The French Connection

There are an amazing number of French fingerprints all over the Plame-Wilson affair. While it is not easy to penetrate the dark fog of lies, there is a highly consistent pattern pointing to French government involvement with a Watergate-style assault on the American Presidency, fronted by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

In 2002 French intelligence forged the notorious document claiming that Saddam tried to obtain Niger uranium. The Italian middle man,Rocco Martino, later confessed to French involvement in open court. Rocco Martino might sound like a small-time mafia hood from the Sopranos. Actually, he works at times for Italian military intelligence. The truth about the French connection came out when Martino confessed in court that the French had given him the forged document to peddle to various intelligence agencies. The Italians and French have had a furious war of words ever since then about who was responsible for the forgery.

The FBI just leaked a claim that Rocco did it just for the money. That is very doubtful. The French naturally deny any responsibility, but the forged document was dropped on the public at exactly the time that Dominique de Villepin, then Foreign Minister, was in New York trying to make Colin Powell believe that France was prepared to help overthrow Saddam. The French forgery was a stink bomb, designed to be exposed in public as soon as Colin Powell publicly accepted it.

At the very same time the Niger forgery showed up, France's Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, was sandbagging Secretary Powell at the UN by pretending to support American efforts against Saddam – even as he got ready to pull out the rug in a surprise press conference. Reporter Kenneth Timmerman told Brit Hume for FoxNews that:

"Our administration thought that the French were with us, that French had dispatched their top general to Centcom, Chirac had promised the president (to support the United States against Saddam). Villepin the foreign minister had promised Powell. They said they were with us, and they weren't. ..."

"So then de Villepin goes outside at noontime. ... Powell is actually watching Fox News… as de Villepin goes on TV … And that's when he announces to the world that France will never ever support the use of force against Saddam Hussein. ... Powell's jaw dropped to the floor…." It was a carefully planned ambush. Timmerman summed it up by saying that

"Chirac lied to the president of the United States, and then he ordered his Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin to do the same thing with Colin Powell." And then, they pulled the plug.

De Villepin's ambush triggered a giant anti-American firestorm in Europe and around the world. Germans, French, Brits and Swedes were foaming at the mouth for months and months. France was therefore extremely successful in discrediting American policy against Saddam.

But that was not enough, because Saddam was quickly knocked over by the US-led coalition forces. Somehow the media fires had to be kept alive. The "Bush lied us into war" slogan had to be kept going in the minds of the public.

Enter our hero, Joseph C. Wilson, from stage left. The French forgery about Niger led straight to Wilson's bogus trip to Africa. Wilson supposedly went there to find out the truth for the CIA. But every government involved already knew the truth about the bogus document, because it showed incorrect names of Niger officials. A single telephone call to Niger would have established that fact.

The reason why Wilson had to travel to Niger in person to "investigate," while drinking mint tea with his uranium mining friends, was to establish his bona fides – to make him an instant "expert witness" on Saddam's dealings with Niger. Did French intelligence urge Wilson to make his trip and enlist his wiufe Valerie to propose him? Without that trip, Joseph C. Wilson had no special claim to any expertise about Saddam's weapons. It was Valerie Plame who was the CIA WMD expert, but it was Wilson who became the front man.

Notice that the modus operandi for the Wilson trip was much the same as for the Niger forgery: a classic con game. Find a sucker, tell him what he wants to hear, and use that credulous embrance by the mark to destroy your enemy. In the first case the sucker was Colin Powell. In the second case it was the New York Times Op-Ed page. In both cases the enemy to be shafted was George W. Bush and the administration. This is how disinformation is supposed to work.

Joseph Wilson had intimate French connections for many years before his mint tea-sipping journey to Niger. In fact, he met his first wife at the French Embassy in Washington. His second wife, Jacqueline, to whom he was still married when he took up with Valerie Plame, was a former French diplomat. There is even a report that she was a "cultural attaché" in Francophone Africa, a post often used as cover for intelligence operatives, though this remains quite a murky point, as tradecraft suggests it should.

Today Wilson claims to be a business agent for "African mining companies." But Niger's mines are owned by a French consortium, which operates cheek-by-jowl with the Quai d'Orsay. Niger itself is a semi-colony of France. No uranium sales go on there without the full knowledge and consent of the French government. Valerie Plame was quoted in a CIA memo as saying that "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts)..." Lots of French contacts, indeed.

Wilson exploded into public view, and spent two years barnstorming around the country, giving outraged speeches to publicize the idea that he had found the smoking gun to prove Bush had lied. Moveon.org and their friends were happy to believe him.

Wilson was interviewed on PBS and NPR, and wrote a book, now thoroughly discredited, to push his anti-Bush agenda. In the process he told so many lies that he lost track of them himself. But that made no difference. The media and the Left leaped on the story like manna from heaven; or, possibly, like fine champagne from France.

Well, hypothetically just suppose for a moment that Wilson's strings are being pulled by the French. What motivates the French government? They have been very clear about that.

Jacques Chirac and his close ally Dominique de Villepin have long proclaimed France to be the strategic enemy of American power. Paris openly yearns to lead the European Union to superpower status, in order to undermine American "hegemony," and above all for the eternal grandeur of la belle France. De Villepin has written books vilifying the United States; he is an open French imperialist, who conceives of himself as a world-historic figure in the mold of his personal heroes Napoleon and Niccolo Machiavelli.

France's short-term aim for the Niger forgery was to block US actions against Saddam Hussein, or at least to discredit America in the run-up to the Iraq war. The long-term strategic purpose was to drive a wedge between the US and Europe, so that the European Union – guided by France – could be persuaded to revolt against fifty years of US leadership of the West.

This strategy succeeded, but not completely. The American action in Iraq provoked massive public fury in Europe, whipped up by the government-owned media and the Left. It caused a rift in public opinion that continues today. Had Tony Blair not gone along with President Bush against Saddam, the EU might now be going on its separate way, aiming for world domination, just as de Villepin has fervently advocated. If the EU Constitution had been approved, as the media confidently predicted it would be, Jacques Chirac might now be running to be the first president of Europe.

For decades France has conducted major industrial espionage in the United States. Having Wilson as a source on Clinton's National Security Council would be an obvious boon for that purpose. Had John Kerry won the 2004 election, Wilson might now be back in the White House, perhaps helping his good friends abroad. He was therefore a very good prospect for French intelligence to cultivate, especially given the lax security standards of the Clinton years. And if Wilson and Plame do succeed in bringing down George W. Bush, Chirac and de Villepin would be overjoyed.

French hatred of American power is the reason why France pressured Turkey (anxious to enter the EU) to block the US IV Infantry Division from crossing Iraq's northern border to help knock over Saddam Hussein. Had the IV ID hit Saddam from the North while Tommy Franks attacked from the South, the current Iraqi insurrection might have been crushed even before it got started, the Baathist hardcore unable to flee north to the Sunni Triangle and entrench itself among the small percentage of Iraqis who benefited from Saddam's rule. The original plan envisioned just such a pincer movement. We therefore owe many of our 2,000 soldiers' deaths to deliberate and malicious French sabotage, with thanks to Dominique de Villepin and Jacques Chirac.

There is every reason to believe that France desperately wants this White House to be weakened or overthrown. They would be happy with Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat as president, because the Euro-socialist, non-interventionist base of that party is compatible with French policies and strategies. European emphasis on the United Nations as the forum for handling international conflicts plays to France's strongest asset in world affairs, its veto-wielding Security Council seat, and its large number of Francophone former colonies, each with a vote in the General Assembly. A strong America wielding its mighty military force is de Villepin's worst nightmare.

What about France and Wilson? While we do not know all the facts, there is no question that Joseph Wilson has acted precisely as we might expect from an agent provocateur. He worked fervently to undermine the Bush White with plainly false accusations, putting the Niger forgery to very good use. Joe Wilson calls himself a business agent for unnamed "African mining companies." We can reasonably guess that he made those contacts during his several postings in Francophone West Africa, possibly when he was Ambassador to Gabon, another former French colony, at the culmination of his State Department career.

Wilson claims credit for persuading Bill Clinton to make a heavily hyped trip to French Africa, tossing millions of US aid dollars to the local dictatorships, including, possibly, some of Wilson's friends. So Wilson apparently works as a consultant for French-owned mining companies in Africa, which would allow him to be openly paid by those companies. None of this makes for a smoking gun, but it is certainly, at minimum, an interesting coincidence that a man with such extensive and intimate French connections should be conducting a ferocious nationwide crusade against the President of the United States, who also happens to be hated by the French government.

Was Wilson acting on his own in planting the Times Op-Ed? Were Valerie Plame and her friends at CIA pulling strings? Or was it other Democrats? There is plenty of evidence for CIA backing of Wilson and Plame, as many have previously noted. There may be nothing more to it than a failed CIA WMD intelligence group covering itself with a manufactured diversionary scandal.

But for someone with Wilson's ego, simple flattery by the "sophisticated" French might be a powerful tool of manipulation. He has all the appearance of a wounded narcissist, someone who needs the attention of the world to make up for his inner deficiencies. When the Soviet KGB ran agents all over the Western world they rarely bothered to pay them. They were "idealists" whose vanity could be easily manipulated.

Is all that tangled enough for you? Keep in mind that the whole affair may be a classic disinformation campaign, run by the pros who make their living doing just that. Just as Watergate showed how Mark Felt learned how to make damaging leaks from J. Edgar Hoover, the modus operandi of the Plame-Wilson affair reflects professional intelligence methods.

For now, there are only questions, not answers. Maybe someone with the power to supboena and compel testimony under oath ought to be investigating. Whoever is guiding Joseph C. Wilson IV seems to specialize in dangerous intrigue. We have not seen the end of them yet.

Fred Norris BBC Report –

This report explains why WaPo Ombudsman Getler said that PM Mayaki did not meet with the Iraqi delegation. If you examine the Senate report, you’ll find on page 43 that it was Wilson’s intelligence report.

The intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996- 1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999, [DELETED] businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted "expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq."

So, given the BBC report, Wilson was wrong about the meeting taking place, and ended up reinforcing the CIA’s faulty assessment

chronology

1. March 5, 2002 Wilson is Debriefed Just After Returning From Niger (SSCI, p.43-44)
Wilson tells two CIA officers according to their report that Mayaki met with the Iraqi Delegation in June 1999.

2. July 6, 2003: “What I Didn’t Find In Africa” Wilson’s NY Times Op/ed:
No mention of the previously alleged meeting in the NYT op/ed or in his first “Meet the Press” interview that same day.

3. July 11, 2003: DCI Tenet Releases a Statement on Niger Controversy/Wilson’s Trip:
First (?) public mention of the alleged June 1999 Iraqi/Niger meeting.

4. September 16, 2003: Talking Points Memo Interviews Joe Wilson (page 16-17)
Wilson says his interlocutor [Mayaki] “declined” to take the 1999 Iraqi meeting in question.

5. October 5, 2003: Wilson Appears on “Meet the Press”—Again! (MSNBC, transcript)
Wilson’s asked about Tenet’s July 11 statement. Wilson responds, “the meeting never took place..”

6. January, 2004: Wilson Speaks Again to His Source [Mayaki] (“The Politics of Truth” p.28)
Source [Mayaki] tells Wilson that “Baghdad Bob” was probably the Iraqi he [Mayaki] met at the OAU meeting in 1999.

7. May 2, 2004: Wilson Appears on “Meet the Press” Yet Again. (MSNBC, transcript)
Wilson: “That’s right…there was a meeting...between a senior Niger official and an Iraqi official”

8. July 7, 2004: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report Is Publicly Released
Report States: [Wilson] said that Mayaki did meet with the Iraqi delegation but never discussed what was meant by “expanding commercial relations." (Senate Intelligence report, page 44).

9. July 14, 2004: BBC Report “Ex-premier [Mayaki] denies Iraq link” *(See below)
BBC interviews Niger’s ex-prime minister Mayaki. The BBC reports that Ibrahim Mayaki said the following:

A) Iraq did not try to buy uranium
B) No Iraqi delegation went to Niger while he was foreign or prime minister.
C) Mayaki denies allegations in the Senate report that he admitted meeting a delegation from Iraq in 1999.
D) Mayaki now says he has no recollection of such a meeting [as described in the Senate Report], while he was in government from 1999-2001.

10 July18, 2004: WaPo Ombudsman Response to Wilson’s Critique of the Post:
“But the [Senate] study concludes that Wilson's March 2002 report, which noted that the former prime minister of Niger said that in 1999 he was approached by a businessman insisting he meet with an Iraqi delegation (which he did not do)…” (Getler, WaPo, 7/18/2004)

June 14, 2003 - Wilson speaks at a forum sponsored by the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC). Wilson does not tell his audience that he was the source for stories about "the ambassador's" trip to Africa, but his comments, like the following, reveal intimate knowledge of the mission.

" I just want to assure you that that American ambassador who has been cited in reports in the New York Times and in the Washington Post, and now in the Guardian over in London, who actually went over to Niger on behalf of the government--not of the CIA but of the government--and came back in February of 2002 and told the government that there was nothing to this story, later called the government after the British white paper was published and said you all need to do some fact-checking and make sure the Brits aren't using bad information in the publication of the white paper, and who called both the CIA and the State Department after the president's State of the Union and said to them you need to worry about the political manipulation of intelligence if, in fact, the president is talking about Niger when he mentions Africa."

" That person was told by the State Department that, well, you know, there's four countries that export uranium. That person had served in three of those countries, so he knew a little bit about what he was talking about when he said you really need to worry about this. But I can assure you that that retired American ambassador to Africa, as Nick Kristof called him in his article, is also pissed off, and has every intention of ensuring that this story has legs. And I think it does have legs. It may not have legs over the next two or three months, but when you see American casualties moving from one to five or to ten per day, and you see Tony Blair's government fall because in the U.K. it is a big story, there will be some ramifications, I think, here in the United States. So I hope that you will do everything you can to keep the pressure on. Because it is absolutely bogus for us to have gone to war the way we did.

******

Wilson claimed Vice President Cheney received the October 9 documents documents directly from the British a year before Bush spoke the "16 words" in the January 2003 State of the Union. Yet we know that is a bald faced lie because the documents are not known to the US a year before the January 2003 State of Union address. Wilson also related to The New Republic:

Cheney then had given the information to the CIA, which in turn asked a prominent diplomat, who had served as ambassador to three African countries, to investigate. He returned after a visit to Niger in February 2002 and reported to the State Department and the CIA that the documents were forgeries. The CIA circulated the ambassador's report to the vice president's office, the ambassador confirms to TNR. But, after a British dossier was released in September detailing the purported uranium purchase, administration officials began citing it anyway, culminating in its inclusion in the State of the Union. "They knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie," the former ambassador tells TNR.

******

July 6, 2003 - New York Times publishes Wilson's now-famous op-ed. That account differs in important ways from the story Wilson has anonymously provided the Times, the Washington Post and the New Republic.

Wilson acknowledges for the first time he had not seen any forged document. "As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors--they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government--and were probably forged." Wilson acknowledged the same thing in an appearance that morning on Meet the Press, saying, "I had not, of course, seen the documents."

And still, the reason Joe Wilson was courted to write an op-ed for the New York Times and to appear on Meet the Press was not because his analysis of the Niger intelligence differed from that of the CIA or of Bush administration policymakers but because according to Wilson he was the man with the proof; but we know he had no such "proof".

The Butler report said British intelligence had “credible” information, from several sources, that a 1999 visit by Iraqi officials to Niger was for the purpose of buying uranium:

Butler Report:

It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.

The Butler Report affirmed what the British government had said about the Niger uranium story back in 2003, and specifically endorsed what Bush said as well.

Butler Report:

By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” was well-founded.

In the Butler report and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report, we have two reports that shoot down Wilson’s claim that the President lied in his State of the Union Address. Based on these reports, we can directly conclude that Wilson lied, not President Bush.

3. But let’s not stop there. Let’s see what the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report said:

The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported July 7, 2004 that the CIA had received reports from a foreign government (not named, but probably Britain) that Iraq had actually concluded a deal with Niger to supply 500 tons a year of partially processed uranium ore, or “yellowcake.” That is potentially enough to produce 50 nuclear warheads. The Senate report said the CIA then asked a “former ambassador” to go to Niger and report. That is a reference to Joseph Wilson, who later became a vocal critic of the President’s 16 words. The Senate report said Wilson brought back denials of any Niger-Iraq uranium sale, and argued that such a sale wasn’t likely to happen. But the Intelligence Committee report also reveals that Wilson brought back something else as well, evidence that Iraq may well have wanted to buy uranium.

Wilson reported that he had met with Niger’s former Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki, who said that in June 1999 he was asked to meet with a delegation from Iraq to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between the two countries.
Based on what Wilson told them, CIA analysts wrote an intelligence report saying former Prime Minister Mayki “interpreted ‘expanding commercial relations’ to mean that the (Iraqi) delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales.”

In fact, the Intelligence Committee report said that “for most analysts” Wilson’s trip to Niger “lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal.”

The subject of uranium sales never actually came up in the meeting, according to what Wilson later told the Senate Intelligence Committee staff. He quoted Mayaki as saying that when he met with the Iraqis he was wary of discussing any trade issues at all because Iraq remained under United Nations sanctions. According to Wilson, Mayaki steered the conversation away from any discussion of trade.

Washington Post article subtitled “Wilson’s Credibility Debated as Charges In Probe Considered” said about Wilson:

Wilson has maintained that Plame was merely “a conduit,” telling CNN last year that “her supervisors asked her to contact me.”

But the Senate committee found that “interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife…suggested his name for the trip.” The committee also noted a memorandum from Plame saying Wilson “has good relations” with Niger officials who “could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” In addition, notes on a State Department document surmised that Plame “had the idea to dispatch him” to Niger.

Possessed of a flamboyant style and a love for the camera lens, Wilson helped propel the unmasking of his wife’s identity as a CIA operative into a sprawling, two-year legal probe that climaxes this week with the possible indictment of key White House officials. He also turned an arcane matter involving the Intelligence Identities Protection Act into a proxy fight over the administration’s credibility and its case for war in Iraq.

Senate intelligence report offers support for claim Iraq sought African uranium

AP , WASHINGTON
Sunday, Jul 11, 2004,Page 7

A Senate report criticizing false CIA claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the same time provides support for an assertion the White House repudiated: that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.

White House officials said last year it was a mistake for President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union message last year, to refer to British reports that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's government tried to buy uranium. The White House said the evidence for that claim was too shaky to have been included in such an important speech, and CIA Director George Tenet took the blame for failing to have the reference removed.

A report released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee offers new details backing the claim.

French and British intelligence separately told the US about possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Niger, the report said. The report from France is significant not only because Paris opposed the Iraq war but also because Niger is a former French colony and French companies control uranium production there.

Joseph Wilson, a retired US diplomat the CIA sent to investigate the Niger story, also found evidence of Iraqi contacts with Nigerien

officials, the report said.

Wilson told the committee that Niger's former prime minister Ibrahim Mayaki reported meeting with Iraqi officials in 1999. Mayaki said a businessman helped set up the meeting, saying the Iraqis were interested in "expanding commercial relations" with Niger -- which Mayaki interpreted as an overture to buy uranium, Wilson said.

All of that information came to Washington long before an Italian journalist gave US officials copies of documents purporting to show an agreement from Niger to sell uranium to Baghdad. Those documents have been determined to be forgeries.

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